What Energizes Us?
Most of us, most of the time, do not think about where energy comes from. We flip switches, light stoves, take hot showers, turn ignition keys, pour a glass of orange juice. In the course of one day, we almost certainly use electricity generated in a coal fired power plant. We heat our homes with oil drilled from deserts halfway around the world or natural gas from beneath the Boreal forest, over a thousand miles away. We spend tremendous amounts of energy to unearth energy. We pry open the doors of the planetary safety deposit box and ransack stored sunlight.
Why was it buried so deep? Because life thrives on sunlight and soil, air and water, nothing more. Over millennia, living systems fine tuned themselves - plants, animals, and microorganisms all interconnected. Our earth maximized the conditions for life, burying toxic heavy metals, balancing the atmosphere, and stashing away excessive carbon deep underground - ultimately creating unimaginable, beauty, diversity and abundance.
Unimaginable that is… until life miraculously became aware of itself, giving birth to imagination. Youngest of nature’s species, we are her prodigal children. Teenagers, with keys to the car, flexing our muscles, testing our creative and destructive limits. And those born into wealthy societies throw huge parties - hey we got the energy - creating works of genius and hubris, sometimes beautiful sometimes horrible, ever expanding.
We are starting to suffer some mighty hangovers. Our bodies are trying to tell us something. And while the gratification is fleeting, we go back for more. In a few consequential ways, we ignore our mother. She restrains herself, knowing we must learn for ourselves, if we are ever to learn at all.
We are nature, for the first time aware of herself. Awakening, and, slowly, growing up.
I live on a solar-powered boat and yet I am not carbon neutral.
I, too, struggle for carbon balance.
